One year ago today: April 13, 2020, $35k & the Marscopter anniversary.
Five years ago today: April 13, 2016, you really own nothing.
Nine years ago today: April 13, 2012, college, money, guitars.
Random years ago today: April 13, 2007, rare Cadillac & Taurus pic.
It’s either a nice day or the eye of the hurricane. Let’s get some work done this morning, I had breakfast in the yard. Unusual for me unless conditions are perfect. Besides, these days that’s coffee and a sandwich. And Tampa radio, as Boss Hogg won’t play in the yard. Eric Trump, that’s the next president, if you judge by straight talk aligned with the facts. He’s plainly benefitted from an expensive upbringing, kind of reminds me along the path of King Juan Carlos, who, say what you want, he tried to improve the country. Biden’s first 100 days is nearly up and he’s spend most of it undoing Trump-term policies with disastrous effects.
Back in the yard, it got just too hot by noon. Here’s the exciting pace of things. I hauled the pylons and end plates over to where the shed I have not yet decided on would be. If I go ahead. And took some of the 6-foot pieces out of the attic, enough to start, maybe. Braving the noon sun, I dismantled the recent pallet. That was only a bit of fun. One reason I didn’t inspect the work canopy roof before the storm is the hassle of dragging a ladder through the shed to get up there. So, inside the shed I built a ladder out of the pallet wood.
See the nice picture. Without experience or plans, I’m pleased but those with a little shop in high school might snicker. As they make their next mortgage payment, don’t be late. This ladder, when painted, is to be permanently attached to the north wall of the shed and give me a reason to call it a day. A one-gallon of peach tea day so far. The neighbor came over looking for work so I set him to finding me a set of headlights for the van. He knows people in the auto repair business who offer deep discounts to those who helped them when they were down & out. Like I did.
Mindil Beach.
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How hot was it? Here’s a picture of the chicken not eating. That’s how hot. I’m planning to level in the pylons for the potential shed floor in a couple hours when the shade reaches that part of the yard. The attic planks are pressure treated, I can’t remember why I would buy six footers back then, unless it was to double them up for twelves. They’ve warped after four years in the attic heat, but that isn’t a big deal. This cowboy knows how to deal with bent joists.
How about the latest Canadian travel rules? That bland man with no eyebrows warned people the rules could be changed arbitrarily and he’s doing it. The game plan seems to be keeping people at home. Those who travel could be banned from returning. Same as the US, it is not about COVID. It is about seeing how far the minority can shove the majority around. Unlike the US of A, Canadians are defenseless if the government decides to do anything they please. But don’t expect any trouble, since it has always been that way.
It was outside for another few hours and here’s a picture of where the shed that might happen would be if I decide to do it. The fact that it is leveled and squared, a lot of in the dirt work, is just to see how it would impact the scenery. I put the ladder up but it is not fastened in yet as I’m thinking of a railing, at least at the top. That pallet lumber can be super dry which makes it light and easy to work with. Not even the fact I’m taking the evening off to price out the lumber isn’t a sure thing.
The neighbor was over, not doing that well. I insisted he sit down, have an extra cup of tea. Which reminds me, when am I going to get my work shed equipped for tea. Coffee for me is sit-down inside ritual, but tea I can slurp on the go. In fact, hold on, I’m getting some right now. I am indifferent about green tea and herbal teas, but most are fine. Give me orange pekoe, very sweet. Where were we? Ah, yes, taking a break and I found an old movie I’ve never seen, “Juggernaut”, the one from 1974. Complete with a scene of kids playing Atari Pong, which had just been released when the movie started filming.
I like it but the portrayal of much fashion and characters is a bit hokey, in that by then not that many people were buying into the role playing projected by the media. This decline in conformity was a welcome change, but the school system fought back, producing clones, whose influence became overwhelming one they discovered the Internet. Sigh, but one nice thing. In the movie, no fatties, no annoying ethnics, no tattoos, and best of all, no political correctness. Which means the movie probably has an actual plot, a touch of realism, and some sort of happy ending for most people, not the special interest groups. I may enjoy this.
ADDENDUM
More telemarket calls, that’s one group I hate. I’ll never understand, since they are scamming people, why they are not arrested. Which brings us to the gig economy, I have a few words to say about that. It is nothing new. I get a lot of flak on that claim, but hear me out. If there is one thing computers should teach us, it is that something “new” on a computer does not always mean progress. It is mindless thinking to blandly accept everything as it is done on line as the new and latest business model. Not so, the concept of “metered service” goes back centuries.
All that’s changed is computer make it possible. No original or independent thought required to track, profile, analyze, and take advantage of every customer. For as long as can be remembered, sales organizations have dreamed of record of every transaction and background fact but this was costly and time consuming. My first brush with it was the amount of records kept by the phone company dating back in my office to 1921. But without computers, the records attached to the phone number, not the user. You see what I’m saying.
I was early to recognize the danger for abuse of these systems. I learned by my teens that the general populace was not prepared for any onslaught of electronic invasion into their privacy. I’ll cut this short by telling my first project. In the small town where I grew up, the community calendar was free and contained everybody’s birthday (not their age). Each calendar day square had a list of your school chums or their parents born that date. It was tedious to go through and find out the birthdays of everybody in your class at school.
So what I did was enter all that into a computer file. It could be printed out alphabetically, which was a vast improvement. From there, it was a simple matter to use the original doxxing device (the phone book) to attach and address. This was tedious work, taking four months. I made two mistakes. I told people what I was doing, and I sold the disk to the hardware store for $140. They proceeded to use a then-new device called a mailing list to send birthday special sales notices for transistor radios.
This infuriated people because at the time, a lot of people were content with the anonymity provided by the fact is was once a lot of work to get information. That next year, the town council voted to quit printing the birthdates, never actually saying I was the cause. The “gig” economy is slowpokes who came along 30 years later (the Internet was NOT big for the first ten years until the chronics entered the fray). They expanded on this ancient theme. It isn’t rocket surgery to figure out it is a lot easier to get $1 each out of a million sheeple than $1 million out of one. That’s my point, that it is computers that make it possible, not any advancement of thinking or education among the masses.
And, since nothing happens in isolation, computers followed the same path as the self-serve gas station. It’s a bad idea for the most part, but once one AOL does it, all the rest have to follow suit like it or not.
Did I ever use this ability against anyone myself? Sure, but only to teach a lesson. I was the guy who could first originally ID most people on Craigslist who flagged excessively or got too libtard. There was no terms of service against it in the early days, I would sometimes (anonymously of course) print satellite photos of their house. My on-line persona, (Cpt. Bolo) received many a death threat. Very few people took precautions against this, it’s likely they didn’t have the brains or even know it was possible.
Craigslist eventually, but ever so gradually, tightened up the system. My favorite in the early days was to design and exact copy of their display screen and post it. Of course the cancel and quit buttons were just pictures so they did not work (“Your computer has been disabled.”) I would then flash a “Virus Downloading” banner on the screen. Another favorite (I told you all about these long ago) was to redirect the flags of my posts to the “best of” site. Or the post that was the maximum 45 blank pages. The exit button used to be at the bottom. Much fun.
